


West of Sunfall

by bela013



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout Van Buren, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28616061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bela013/pseuds/bela013
Summary: The meeting between an escaping prisoner and a man about to be hanged.A timid attempt at the original versions of the Courier and Joshua's relationship according to whatever scrap of Van Burren information I could find.
Relationships: Female Courier & Joshua Graham, Hanged Man & Prisoner
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [К западу от заката](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28731387) by [NightBat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightBat/pseuds/NightBat)



She was weak. There was no other way to put it. Prison broke her in more ways than one. She was a day away from that hell, and she knew it was not enough. There was a dark cloud chasing her, and there was nothing she could do, but drag her body forward. If she was to die, she rather die in the desert, as the approaching thunderstorm shredded her skin from bones. Anything was better than dying in a cell.

It's already night when she sees the approaching lights of a settlement. Dead trees of petrified bark frame a narrow path down to the stream that crosses the area. She vaguely remembers it, from when she got dragged to prison a little more than ten years ago. It looked like a graveyard in broad daylight. Under the overcast moon, it looks like they were almost alive, looming over her, watching and waiting.

A noise ahead slows her down. A strangled shout, and then the distinct sound of flesh being hit. It was a loud smack, being repeated over and over. She bites back a sob, fear crawls over her skin. The only way was forward. She grips the single pistol she stole during her escape and the confusion of the riot. 

Tears start to flow when she reaches the clearing. Her fingers tremble on the trigger of the 9mm. In front of her, is something that was so common in prison, that it causes her backlash. A small group circle a person on the ground, lashing them with a wooden stick, that almost curled around their torso when they were struck.

She wanted to do something. To step up. To fight. To stop this. She could barely breathe. They all seem to wear a mixture of NCR and prison guards garb. If she were in her right mind, she would have noticed how weird those clothes fit them, and how they looked more like raiders and tribals than NCR. But at the moment, she was too afraid to even notice, when one of them started to drag their prisoner to a nearby tree.

She sees the noose though. Almost feels it around her neck. She was supposed to die by it, before they forgot they had her locked up in prison. Their own prisoner is hoisted up the nose, and they looked already dead. They're not even fighting for air. She was hyperventilating, and that might have tipped them off about her.

Maybe it was divine intervention, or just the last taste of her infamous luck. Because when they turn against her, she pulls the trigger, her aim true. In her old NCR days, a 9mm was the same as a bb gun against jacked up raiders. But the bullets seem to find their way straight into their eyes, one after the other. When she comes back to herself, she's the only one standing, and she is rushing towards the hanged one, tripping on the corpses of her assailants and then on her own legs.

The hanged prisoner is a dead weight, as she struggles to cut the hope off the tree. They hit the ground with a thud. She knows they are dead, and that makes her shake in silent rage. This felt like a nightmare, like all the time she was forced to watch the guards hang the small times that didn't deserve to be there in prison with her and the other criminals.

The corpse on the floor, is of a pitiful looking man, his face was covered with bruises, cuts and a burn that covered a great part of his face. Her hand touches the scarring that stretched over his scalp, and she silently prays for the hanged man. This wasn't right, this brutal violence wasn't right. Even in her deep fear of being captured and brought back to prison, she makes the decision of laying him to rest, even if she has to dig his grave with her own hands.

She moves to close his milky blue eyes. In her desperation, she must have forgotten to do so. As a strong hand moves to size her wrist, she is paralyzed. The corpse in front of her turn his dead eyes towards her, and a horrible choking noise. A scream echoes among the dead trees. The corpse screams a broken scream, like a dying man, like a dead man.

There is no energy to scream back. All her energy is put on pulling her wrist free and taking off towards the dead trees. Her mouth is open, her lungs burn, her stomach cramp. She is dead. Dead. Dead. This was hell. She would've never survived with 9mm. She would never be able to escape prison. She was dead in her cell. The radroaches must be eating her already. She was dead.

Something collides against her with enough force to make her skull bounce on the hard ground. Even in this limbo hell, she feels the pain of having her hair yanked back, and the pressure of a hand over her mouth.

"You'll kill us" the voice at her ear, is the voice of the dead, of the hanged man that managed to capture her. "You'll bring the whole Fort Abandon on us" she swears she can feel his teeth against her ear, and she chokes in her fear, but has no energy to rage against the hold she is in.

The hold on her hair doesn't relent, as the hanged man stands up, and drags her away from the lights over the horizon. His hand leaves her mouth, but she doesn't think about screaming. She  _ was _ weak. And prison broke her in more ways than one.

"Come, savior. Let me repay your kindness." the raspy voice was low, and polite. But she clearly has no choice whether to accept his  _ kindness _ .

They walk past the corpse of the ones who tried to hang him. The hand on her scalp relents its hold, and it comes around her shoulder, to pull her against him. How broken she had to be, to feel warmth for the first time in years, and it's all thanks to the corpse next to her. She cries, but there is a firm hold keeping her upright.


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes up with a start. Dust clung to her sweat covered brow, the air was painfully dry, her nose burned as she tried to breath. Her back is firmly against the hard ground as someone helps her sit up. She coughs hard enough to make her sides ache. Exhaustion made her whole body throb in a dull pain.

Around her isn't her dark and humid cell, but a shack, with the harsh sun coming through the cracks in the board walls. A man presses his hand against her back, and his touch is so delicate, that it takes her a moment to remember who it is. The hanged man guides a bottle of water to her lips, before sitting back in front of her on the floor.

It has been two days since she unknowingly helped him. Two horrible days. She couldn't even blame him for all her problems. Confinament has made her a shadow of her former self. Her escape from the prison had taken more than she could give, her legs throbbed, her feet ached, and she was most definitely suffering from a heat stroke. She tries focusing on the room around her, but as the dizziness takes over, she closes her eyes.

She tries not to think of the way he dragged her out of the dead trees forest. Fear clouded her mind then, she could not see the desperation so clearly written on her companion's face. It was the look of a hunted animal. He looked like a yao guai, half burned, half crazed. She took a last fortifying breath, before opening her eyes. He was staring at her with an intensity she could not name.

"Is this my new prison?" her voice is a rasp, and it burns to speak. But she must know, even if it earned her his wrath. Better to die now, and spare her future pain.

"Prison?" his voice was much like her, a reminder of his near strangulation. His eyes were almost milky in their whiteness. He looked like a dead man. "You're my savior. The sun was killing you." There is a presumed intimacy on his tone, as if they were old friends, companions for longer than their present suffering. "I've seen slaves die like that." The way he speaks, the easiness which he says 'slave', makes her think of his origin. He was no raider. He wasn't a tribal.

"Legion" she is tired. Could she bargain her safety with such a man?

"Not anymore" no shame in his words, only a darkness in his looks, an anger that would have made her younger self flinch away. Many convicts in prison had shared that anger towards their old masters. The NCR was usually the one they cursed, sometimes the Brotherhood. This was the first time she heard of a legionnaire surviving their departure. Taking a look at his bruised and scarred face, then to the angry mark around his neck, she wonders if he had actually survived the legion.

"I don't wanna die." she does not beg. That is a statement, she wants to live. But she will not beg. Not now. Not anymore.

"I will protect you." his face is open, and his words feel truthful. The truth of a crazed man.

"I want to be free." maybe she wasn't as broken as she thought she were. Because she will not sell herself for her safety. Not to him, not to anyone else. Not anymore.

"I will follow  _ you _ wherever you may go." he reaches for her, but in a way she would never expect of a man such as him. His head was bowed and his hands were presented palm up for her, in supplication. "You saved my life. My life is  _ yours _ ." At her silence, he looks up at her, and it is him who begs, it is him that is selling his body and freedom. "Please, let me repay you. Let me repay your kindness."

"I don't want this. I don't want your life" his whole body bows forward, and he prostrated himself on the floor for her. She hears a low scream, a desperate sound come from him. Even if she wanted, she wouldn't have the strength to run now.

"Please. Please. Please." his forehead touched the ground, and when he starts to slowly hit it against the wonky floorboard of the shack, she reaches for him. " _ Please _ "

This had been her life for years in prison. How many did she see break down when their whole life went up in flames as they were thrown in jail? Too many. She guides his head to her lap, and allows him to calm down on his own. He cries and begs, he screams. No matter the anger and the rage, they all cried once they were abandoned by the one thing that had been their whole life. She remembers crying, when she was sentenced for insubordination. She had begged then.

"You can't come with me." She says once he stops crying, his head still on her lap. "I have nowhere to go."

He nods as if he listened to her, as if he understood, but he doesn't move away from her. So she slowly starts to pet his head. This whole thing felt twisted. But they were just dogs of war, broken, looking for something to keep on fighting for. In that one moment, the closest thing she had to a companion, was the corpse of a hanged man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: This Van Buren thing is just a oneshot, I am not waisting energy of this.  
> My brain, hyperfixating on Hanged Man/Prisoner: ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. Chapter 3

She is still wearing her prisoner jumpsuit, so going to a nearby settlement isn't an option. She isn't even sure of where she is. It could be deep into Arizona or somewhere in the Mojave. Fuck, she could be in New Reno for all she knew. She was from California, and had lived into NCR protected lands all her life. For a small second, she thinks of walking back home. Of just looking at the sun, and going West. But she was a criminal still. There was no life for her in California. Not anymore.

She looks over her shoulders, and spots the Hanged Man, shadowing her. He refused to tell her of his name. In fact, he refused to acknowledge her beyond the fact that he will follow her.

The day before, he had cried on her lap, like a child, and after he was done, he wiped his tears and crawled to a distant corner of the shack they were in. She tried asking him questions, his name, where they were, if he could leave her alone. All she got in return was silence. He only looked at her, when she looked away. She could see him, from the corner of her eyes, staring at her with an intensity that didn't fit a man that almost died.

Out of nowhere, a small raider party jumps them. She scrambles to pick up her ding 9mm. And it's horrified by how her bullets don't seem to land. It had been so easy to save him. Now, she can't even save herself. The Hanged Man doesn't seem to have the same problem.

He screams like a feral ghoul as he charges at the raiders. They were lucky, that all the raiders had were bats, and knives. He tackles one, and wrestles the knife out of their hands with ease. Then he proceeds to headbut the raider until their face was a bloody mess. The noise is sickening, and the other three raiders in the party seem scared of the rabid man who laid waste to their companion. Their fear is not enough to protect them. They all fall, one after the other. She sees one of them stick their knife into the Hanged Man's shoulder, but it doesn't matter in the end. They are strangled by the bloodied hands that beat their companions to death. It's a blood feast. And she has a front row seat to it all.

When they're all dead, he turns to her, and looks her in the eyes. There is no shame in his posture, no pride either. It's like the violence around him never happened. She watches him in silence. There was blood dripping from his hair line, maybe his or the raider he brained to death. It makes his scared face even more horrible. She tried to be scared of the sight in front of her, she should be scared, but she was just confused. She could have ran. She could've ran while he was busy with the raiders.

She does the opposite of running. She lifts her hand in a sign of peace, of surrender, and slowly steps up to him. He doesn't move away from her, and just stares, and she touches around the knife, and sees it isn't deep, just stuck at an odd angle.

"How are you alive?" He doesn't answer, he just tilts his head to look at her better. She steps back, and thinks to look for something in the raider's pockets to help with his wounds, when his hand comes to rest on her arm.

His fingers are almost over the bruise marks she had on her wrist, bruises that he left there himself. But his touch is light, not the forbidden touch of their meeting.

"Let me look for medicine, or at least something to stop the blood when I remove the knife." She doesn't smile at him, as did for the NCR soldiers she used to treat, but she offers him the last of her trust.

For criminals like her, this was the only thing left to hope for. Companionship from another criminal. It was just like prison, but so much better. The sun was shining, bright and merciless. But she was alive to see it. Her companion was a wild man, covered in blood, but she was sane enough to treat him.

Eventually, he lets go of her arm, and she searches for anything to help him. This time, it was her that guided him to sit on the ground, no matter that they were in the middle of nowhere. She even puts her 9mm in his hands. She makes quick work, and stabs his shoulder with a med-x needle, before removing the knife. It is only when she presses a somewhat clean rag over the stab wound that his nose scrunched in pain.

"Chems don't work on me." She nods at that, but not really paying attention. With the hand not busy with the rag, she clicks a lighter. A keepsake that she actually acquired in prison. She removes the rag, and burns the open mouth of his stab wound, blood and all. He only hisses as she crudely closes his wound.

The sun begging to set over the horizon, and as the cold wind drags a dust wave, she shivers in preparation of the cold night to come. Her companion is silent as she picks clean the raiders around them, but his eyes never leave her. One raider had a jacket tied around their waist, there is some blood on it, but it looks old, all dried up, so she takes it for herself. There is another jacket, this one is dirtier, but it's bigger, so she throws it at the Hanged Man's crossed legs on the ground.

"Tell me where you want to go, Savior. And I will take you there." She looks up from the bullet satchel one raider had at their hip, and this time, she smiles at him.

"I wanna go West." Her smile is true. She allows herself this small moment of hope. She wants to go West. She wants to go home. Consequences be dammed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, I keep finding myself writing for two characters that technically don't exist.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I don't finish my incomplete fic, but then write this mess. But I restarted New Vegas and I have some thoughts.


End file.
